"As for whether I hate the family head," the doctor said.

"I can only tell you, I don't!"

"There are two reasons why I don't hate the family head: first, none of those who died were my close relatives, and I didn't even have much interaction with them. Why should I hate him?"

"To put it bluntly."

"If anyone lying in a grave saw the people visiting their grave laughing and joking, showing no respect or sincerity whatsoever, even if you had immense magical power, would you bless them with promotions and riches?"

What the doctor said wasn't unreasonable.

If descendants are too distant in time, they won't have any reverence for the deceased. Even if they burn paper money, the deceased won't receive it and will have to live like wandering ghosts.

The doctor continued, "Another reason is that I knew this day would come."

"Back then, when the Old Ancestor came to Ningkang Temple, he set up this restriction here. It was to prevent the Luan family from losing control of the Dominator one day, so it could be sealed within Ningkang Temple."

The doctor kept saying "Dominator" without specifying whether the Dominator was a god or a demon.

This shows that he doesn't know what kind of existence dominates Ningkang Temple.

The doctor said, "Zang Jian and I are the last two guardian ghost gods of the Luan family. Our mission is to completely destroy Ningkang Temple after the family head and the Dominator perish together, so that the secrets of Ningkang Temple will disappear forever."

"But what I didn't expect was that the family head never sent any news. Instead, he threw out a few bottles of blood."

"I did a few experiments with those blood samples, and all the ghosts in Ningkang Temple were afraid of the blood. No ghost dared to approach it."

"I never understood what the family head meant, so I went to consult the notes left by the Old Ancestor of the Luan family in confusion. Only then did I realize that this blood was actually waiting for a destined person."

"I kept tricking people into coming in and distributing the blood to them, all to find the destined person as soon as possible so that I could be freed."

I pondered for a moment before saying, "How much do you know about the Dominator of Ningkang Temple?"

"Not much!" The doctor thought for a moment and said, "Come with me, I'll show you something. Maybe then you'll understand."

As he spoke, the doctor led us toward a building in the distance.

Ye Yang whispered to me, "According to the design of the temple, that direction is the Sutra Repository."

The Sutra Repository not only stores scriptures but also serves as the temple's archive, storing important records.

After the doctor led us into the Sutra Repository, he moved a bookshelf from the corner of the wall and pointed to the steps behind it. "The secret is here!"

The doctor took out a book from the bookshelf and handed it to me, saying, "There are nineteen steps here."

"However, you can only step on eighteen steps. There's one step that no one knows where it is. Only the person who steps on the last step can see the true secret of Ningkang Temple."

I casually flipped through the ancient book and couldn't help but frown slightly: "The Eighteen Levels of Hell?"

There's a legend about stairs that says no matter what building you construct, the stairs can't have eighteen levels. If there's no other way, you'd rather level the difference in stair height than have the stairs appear to have an eighteenth level.

Because the eighteenth level is something to be avoided. Walking down eighteen levels of stairs is equivalent to walking down into the eighteen levels of hell.

The doctor took out another notebook and said, "This contains the Old Ancestor's journey to Ningkang Temple."

While I was flipping through the notebook, the doctor explained, "According to the records, Ningkang Temple is not a place for worshiping the Buddha. It's a place for worshiping the ghosts and gods within a few hundred miles."

"The abbot of Ningkang Temple wanted to accumulate merit by delivering these ghosts and gods."

"Later, more and more ghosts and gods were sent to Ningkang Temple, and countless wronged souls began to flood into Ningkang Temple."

"The abbot and the monks could no longer deliver those spirits and fierce gods, so they could only seal them while continuing to deliver them."

"If the Old Ancestor hadn't accidentally discovered the secret of Ningkang Temple, those ghosts and gods would have already wreaked havoc on the world."

The things Xuan Wu recorded in the notebook were exactly the same as what the doctor said. When Xuan Wu was living in seclusion, he accidentally heard that there was a temple on the mountain that specialized in housing madmen. Out of curiosity, he came to investigate.

It was then that he discovered that those so-called madmen were all possessed by evil spirits.

On the surface, the abbot of Ningkang Temple was housing madmen, but in reality, he was delivering evil spirits.

At that time, it was a time of war and chaos, with fierce souls running rampant, but it was also an opportunity to accumulate merit.

There was nothing wrong with the method chosen by Ningkang Temple. The mistake was that the ghosts, gods, and fierce souls they brought into Ningkang Temple exceeded the temple's capacity.

The abbot of Ningkang Temple was already exhausted from delivering fierce souls day and night.

If Xuan Wu hadn't acted in time, not only would no one in Ningkang Temple have survived, but the surrounding thousands of miles would have turned into a ghost domain.

Xuan Wu saved Ningkang Temple but failed to save the abbot, and thus missed the biggest secret of Ningkang Temple.

During the period when Xuan Wu guarded Ningkang Temple in place of the abbot, he also tried to unravel the secrets of the temple.

The eighteen levels of stairs behind the bookshelf are the passage to unlocking the secret of Ningkang Temple.